Tag: Palestinian Youth

To pay his tuition fees, he had a job in a clothing store serving Qalandiya refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. He was working there on Monday, 29 February, when two Israeli soldiers drove into the camp, reportedly by mistake.

Fadi Shaludi, 14, has not left his house since November. Every day, he sees the children from his neighborhood go off to school. He especially misses playing football with his friends and walking around Jerusalem’s Old City.

Fadi is under house arrest. He fears going downstairs, let alone to the corner shop next to his home. His punishment came after he was charged with throwing stones at Israeli troops during confrontations in Silwan, the area of occupied East Jerusalem where he lives, in October.

That incident also resulted in his mother, Shifa Obeido, being put under house arrest on charges of “incitement.” She awaits a trial that will likely see her forcibly transferred from Jerusalem.

When the “intifada of the knives” set off in October last year, Western reporters flooded in toJerusalem to cover the new “escalation,” interview people from “both sides of the conflict” and raise several variations of the old question: “Is this the beginning of a third intifada?”

Inevitably, the journalists left once a massive crackdown significantly reduced the number of deadly attacks against Israelis in the city. It is an all too familiar pattern for Palestinians, who know by now that it’s only “escalation” when there are dead or wounded Israelis. Deaths, injuries, arrests and home demolitions inflicted on Palestinians by Israel are deemed business as usual, not worthy of further inquiry.

When Muhannad Halabi stabbed two Israeli men to death and injured a woman and a baby in Jerusalem’s Old City, he started what many Palestinians have called the “intifada of the knives.”

Halabi was shot and killed by Israeli police during the attack in early October last year and the 19-year-old law student was branded a “terrorist” by the media. His parents, however, have a sharply different view: they regard Muhannad as a hero.

“I will always be proud that my son sacrificed his life for the liberation of his homeland,” said his mother Suhair.

In his final posting on Facebook, Muhannad expressed deepanger about the incursions of Israeli settlers into the compound around al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. He had just watched a video of a Palestinian woman being arrested by Israeli police at al-Aqsa.

Israel is citing vague security fears to justify removing Palestinians from Jersulm, but those who have been targeted are putting up a fight.

For Palestinian activist and filmmaker Samer Abu Eisheh, walking in the narrow alleys of Jerusalem’s Old City is like being embraced by his mother.

It was in Jerusalem where he fell in love for the first time and where he met his wife and partner in struggle, Rawan Abu Ghosh. It was in Jerusalem where he has led protests against the occupation with roaring chants and where he was chased on numerous occasions by the Israeli police.